AMD FX-8150 CPU

Intro

The Bulldozer has to be one of the most anticipated PC hardware launches of recent times, and now, after
being "just around the corner" for ages, it's finally here! AMD was kind enough to send us samples, so now
it's finally time to find out what the new processor family can do and how well all the rumors and
speculations in the internet are matched.

Technology

AMD announced seven models, three of which are quad cores, one is six-core and the top three have eight
cores. Out of these the FX-8150, FX-8120, FX-6100 and FX-4100 should be available right away, the others will
be available later on. The prices of the launch models range from $115 for the FX-4100 to $245 for the
FX-8150, so AMD sticks to their idea of reasonable pricing.

And here's how AMD matches their current CPU- and APU-ranges against the Intel's range of processors. The
FX-series is designed to compete with the i5-series chips, while the i7 2600K is left unchallenged. This
stands to reason, as even the most expensive FX-8150 processor is cheaper than the 2600K Sandybridge.

On paper the comparison looks very favorable for AMD, but of course it's good to keep in mind that the
comparison came from AMD's own press release. Either way the facts are that the FX-8150 comes with higher
speed memory support, more cores, more cache, and better support for Crossfire than the Intel's competing
processors. All this for the same price seems a bit too good to be true, but we'll see later on how the
newcomers fair.